Vivian Ziegler was politically active right up until the day she died — and for some time afterwards.

The 96-year-old teacher from Arcata, born in Bayside and raised in Humboldt County, was a dedicated Democrat who studied the issues and encouraged her family to vote, according to her son Jay Ziegler.

“She was just very committed to get her vote in and politically active throughout her life,” Jay Ziegler said.

She died of heart disease in October but not before she turned her vote in for Tuesday’s election, and according to officials at the Humboldt County Elections, her vote for Hilary Clinton will count.

Her vote to re-elect congressman Jared Huffman, appoint Attorney General Kamala Harris to the Senate, and, to her son’s dismay, against recreational marijuana use (Proposition 64) will all count too.

“If a person has cast the ballot during early voting, then it’s in the process,” Humboldt County Clerk and Registrar of Voters Kelly Sanders said.

The dead have a voice in the elections, according to the Pew Research Center, which estimated that more than 1.8 million dead people are listed as voters.

A vote cast by the recently deceased like Ziegler are legitimate even though ballots cast by dead voters are likely to raise concerns of voter fraud, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

“The reasoning is that the voter was eligible at the time of completing the ballot,” the organization wrote on its website.

In Maryland, for instance, laws clearly lists death as not a reason to disqualify a vote if it is cast during the state’s early voting period, which starts weeks before Nov. 8.

“Besides, it can be virtually impossible from a practical point of view to separate out a ballot from someone who died before Election Day from the other ballots received,” the organization wrote.

But the privilege doesn’t extend beyond every grave.

Several states throw out votes from recently deceased, even if they get their vote in during the early voting period.

A case pointed out by Clinton in 2008 during her primary bid, Florence Steen of Rapid City, South Dakota, an 88-year-old woman in hospice care, born before women had the right to vote cast her ballot just before her death, according to the Rapid City Journal. Elections officials didn’t count her ballot.

In Humboldt County, Vital Statistics, a county database of records notifies the registrar when someone has died, which helps keep the registrar up to date, Sanders said.

The record system will alert Sanders’ office if a voter in the county has died ahead of the election.

If they haven’t voted yet then their ballot is voided. A signature that doesn’t match would might also nullify the ballot, she said.

Still, according to Sanders, “Once a voter signs their vote-by-mail ballot and places it in the mail, their ballot has been cast.”